Taiwanese Community

Since 2015, the staff of Wikimedia Taiwan and all the community organizers have done an workshop for organizational learning. Since 2016, there have been a bi-weekly online meet up. Through the activities mentioned above, we discuss the situation, difficulties, and future plans of the Wikimedia of our communities. Before we propose the simple APG, we have invited the local community organizers to bring out proposal of their future development through the above mentioned workshops and online meet ups.

Through this consultation, we have gathered six local programs from different vibrant communities, which will be led by volunteers. Full proposal can be found on this Meta Wiki page in Chinese. These include,

350 articles create or improved, in total, including articles in specialized medical areas.

Improved geographical reach outside of Taipei, including more activities in Kaohsiung and Hsinchu.

Wikimedia taiwan will support these projects through building the capacity of our volunteer communities, to improve our collective ability to plan programs together and report our achievements. Over the course of the grant period, Wikimedia Taiwan will support 10 volunteers across six local communities, through grants, to introduce the communities to reach our common goals as follows:

Wikimedia Taiwan will translate and introduce the “Global metrics” of Wikimedia global movement to each communities. Each communities will discuss and propose several options that is compatible with the grant metrics of Wikimedia Foundation, and we will help them to distill the "required metrics" and "optional metrics according to the community". We will then establish the way to report outcomes, so the supported community can provide data of qualitative and quantitative data to Wikimedia Taiwan.

During April to December 2017, Wikimedia Taiwan will help the before mentioned communities use the outcome report, to provide monthly updates. Totally at least 96 pieces of reports will be established by 6 local communities by their 8 monthly report from their shared goals.

Wikimedia Taiwan will host 2 physical workshops for community organizers in June and December of 2017, and at least 2 online hangout every month (at least 48 sessions totally) to build the capacity of each organizer of local communities in Taiwan to better practice on impact evaluation, project management, and volunteer recruitment.

10th Anniversary of WMTW

Wikimedia Taiwan is established in 2007. It will be our 10th anniversary in 2017. This is an opportunity for us to organize a series of celebration event to connect all the contributors and partners of the Wikimedia movement in Taiwan for the past 10 years, with the aim of sharing our visions for the movement in Taiwan and generating more awareness about Wikimedia. There will be some story telling and experience sharing events to attract more people following the development of Wikimedia movement.

The 10th Anniversary of Wikimedia Taiwan will organize the following event:

Stories of Wikimedians

We will interview with at least 20 active promoter or editor of Wikimedia movement in Taiwan, and each of them will have a profile around 1,000 words in Chinese. Every article will be published in the celebration page on meta, and promote the 10th anniversary campaign through facebook fan page.

One conference

We will host a conference between June and August, with two main themes -

The first theme, we will invite the different groups of Wikimedia users, such as teachers, journalists, students, or other groups of users who require high quality knowledge when inquiring on the internet.) to share their need and wants about Wikimedia projects. The second theme, we will invite the organizers of wiki communities (not only Wikimedia projects, but also including other volunteers who use MediaWiki) to share their experience and vision of Wiki.

One large editathon

We will host an editathon with 30 participants, the participants can pick one theme to focus in the editathon as the article to improve. The time and date may be the same as the conference or before October.

The objectives of the 10th anniversary activities are,

We will promote awareness of the Wikimedia projects in Taiwan. Our national conference will have more than 50 participants, and we will generate more than 10,000+ facebook views for posts about stories of Wikimedians.

20+ articles will be created or improved through the 10th anniversary edit-a-thon, and 30 articles will be created or improved through other 10th anniversary activities.

We will involve 70 participants, including 20 new editors and 5 active editors, in our 10th anniversary events, and we will recognize 20 active volunteers through the Stories of Wikimedians project.

Participants will contribute to a shared vision for the Wikimedia communities in Taiwan, and this outcome will be documented on Meta and/or other relevant Wikimedia projects.

Outreach to New Editors

Along with the development of the community in Taiwan, the need for a more comprehensive teaching materials is increasing. We want to develop a more diverse and updated content and also take a deeper look on our current materials to improve them.

Currently there are only two publication on paper for teaching materials of how to contribute WikiProjects. First one is “The Frontline of Knowledge Sharing: Wikipedia Raiders” written by prestigious Taiwanese ex-Wikimania organizer KaurJmeb. The book was published in 2006, most of the description is not catch up with the current status, and the book is hard to get from the market. The other one is the WMF brochure “Welcome to Wikipedia ”. It is translated in Chinese in 2014. The brochure is quite popular in offline meetups in Taiwan, but only contains a basic instructional content about the user interface and community culture.

We will have achieved the following tasks:

To host monthly Open Education Resource editathon start from May 2017, totally 8 sessions in 2017. This series of events open to participants that freely start or join the educational resource development projects they like to create or improve educational resources related to Wikimedia or other open knowledge projects. We expect 10 participants at the 8 sessions, and hope they contribute to creating or improving 2 educational resources in 2017.

To print out the translated brochures of Illustrating Wikipedia: A guide to contributing content to Wikimedia Commons and Evaluating Wikipedia article quality so we can provide better instruction for new contributors in offline meetups. We plan to reach 75 potential new editors by distributing these materials at 5 events during 2017.

To collect at least 225 pieces of survey sample of Welcome to Wikipedia and have at least 10 focus interviews as the basic ground of a report on the user experience of that brochure. So we can develop a better teaching material for future distribution.

In addition to improving these printed manuals, we will develop a more diverse online teaching material, including three main directions:

To support volunteers for adding more content into Wikimedia projects, especially in skills of writing and photo shooting.

To show new editors that still not familiar with Wikimedia culture and its technical tools self-learning materials in a easier, reading-friendlier, or more attractive way.

To build community organizers capacity of hosting all kinds of events in a better way.

During 2017, we plan to establish baselines for new editors that continue editing after attending a meetup, so that we can understand whether or not we are successfully recruiting new editors through these events using these materials.

'*Taiwanese Community'

The number of participants and new editors are higher than our expected. This should be credited with NTUWPC first, they hold class regularly and cooperate with some courses. Many students of NTU joined Wikimedia on these events. These may make us consider to increase resource input in education program. Medical community and women’s community also have stable numbers of participants in each events.

The output is also higher than our expected. Half of them are made by students of NTU.

Goal 3:Improved geographical reach outside of Taipei, including more activities in Kaohsiung and Hsinchu.

Probably reached in Hsinchu. Not reached in Kaohsiung.

Community in Kaohsiung and Hsinchu still alive but it's a hard way to push them more. They have the same problem: only one person

Note: Some communities like Hualien and Taipei didn't record their data. Some number of goals would increase if they are included. We'll try to count their output by technology tools and put into final report.

'*10th Anniversary of WMTW'

Goal 1: We will promote awareness of the Wikimedia projects in Taiwan. Our national conference will have more than 50 participants, and we will generate more than 10,000+ facebook views for posts about stories of Wikimedians.

There are 62 participants in the conference. Stories of Wikimedians are not published yet, we'll try to finish this idea before end of the year.

Goal 2: 20+ articles will be created or improved through the 10th anniversary edit-a-thon, and 30 articles will be created or improved through other 10th anniversary activities.

Not reached. Only 4 editors improved 5 articles. For saving money and manpower, we decide hold the edit-a-thon at the same time and same place with conference.

We initially thought that if participants were not interested in some sessions, they could skip it and went another room to try some edit. For encouraging participants to edit, we even asked every community designed a poster with their introduction and some easy editing missions (like "find a reference", "add the GPS coordinate to a building article", etc.), a participant can get a small prize if he or she finished more than 3 missions. We made a big mistake because most of participants didn't skip any session.

Goal 3: We will involve 70 participants, including 20 new editors and 5 active editors, in our 10th anniversary events, and we will recognize 20 active volunteers through the Stories of Wikimedians project.

Not completely reached. 62 participants with 30 active editors in conference. 32 participants aren't Wikimedia editors before, but they didn't try to sign up a new ID in the event. Stories of Wikimedians are not published yet.

The reason why we can get enough new editors is same with goal 2.

Goal 4: Participants will contribute to a shared vision for the Wikimedia communities in Taiwan, and this outcome will be documented on Meta and/or other relevant Wikimedia projects.

Not yet. There were some valuable conversations in the conference. We recorded by video and had uploaded to Youtube, but still need some time to sort them out and publish. It will be done this year.

'*Outreach to New Editors'

Goal 1:To host monthly Open Education Resource editathon start from May 2017, totally 8 sessions in 2017. This series of events open to participants that freely start or join the educational resource development projects they like to create or improve educational resources related to Wikimedia or other open knowledge projects. We expect 10 participants at the 8 sessions, and hope they contribute to creating or improving 2 educational resources in 2017.

4 sessions with 7 participants. Participants list can be found here (named "維基教材手作坊")

Just reached.

Goal 2:To print out the translated brochures of Illustrating Wikipedia: A guide to contributing content to Wikimedia Commons and Evaluating Wikipedia article quality so we can provide better instruction for new contributors in offline meetups. We plan to reach 75 potential new editors by distributing these materials at 5 events during 2017.

Not reached yet.

Still working. But it's seems too late to reach new editors. The reason why we are delay is that we take some time to merge three brochures into one, and make sure the new publication can be applied an ISBN code. It can be done before the end of year, and reach to editors next year.

Goal 3:To collect at least 225 pieces of survey sample of Welcome to Wikipedia and have at least 10 focus interviews as the basic ground of a report on the user experience of that brochure. So we can develop a better teaching material for future distribution.

Not reached.

The handbook Welcome to Wikipedia still be provided in our events, but we find the other brochures (ex. a learning sheet) are much useful to help new editors finished an article during a limited time. For the reason, our survey are more about other brochures but this one. We'll try to sort out the data about the other brochures in final report.

Goal 4:In addition to improving these printed manuals, we will develop a more diverse online teaching material, including three main directions:

To support volunteers for adding more content into Wikimedia projects, especially in skills of writing and photo shooting.

To show new editors that still not familiar with Wikimedia culture and its technical tools self-learning materials in a easier, reading-friendlier, or more attractive way.

To build community organizers capacity of hosting all kinds of events in a better way.

Reached.

There are 5 projects now, the list is here (Chinese). 2 of them are about skills of writing or photo shooting:

Project 1, "Translate Illustrating Wikipedia into Chinese": To learn how to use Wikimedia Commons.

project 2, "Learning sheet of biography article": A tool help a editor create a biography article on Wikipedia step by step.

And 1 is for build community organizers capacity:

project 5, "Training for Teaching Assistant of Wikipedia Education Program": A document to help TA work with Wikipedia volunteers in WEP.

Goal 5:During 2017, we plan to establish baselines for new editors that continue editing after attending a meetup, so that we can understand whether or not we are successfully recruiting new editors through these events using these materials.

Not reached yet.

The data can be output by technical tools, we still can try to do it during the last 2 month of 2017.

Please add text or a link to a page with details on your program results. You should report on each of the objectives you included in your Simple APG application.

Taiwanese Community

Overviews

“Taiwanese Community” has the highest level of completion during our three programs in 2017. On the quantitative result, we have over than 130 activities, over 900 participants with 160 new editors. The goals we expected are 100 activities, 700 participants with 50 new. On the qualitative goal, we want improve geographical reach outside of Taipei and it seems be made. Two cases can prove it at least: Hsin Chu Community has their own new project “ Scouting Project”; and several students of Tzu Chi Senior High School held self-organized regular meetups since October.

Planning and Execution

The development of Taiwanese community was a good-sized scale before 2017. When WMTW planed to apply Simple APG in the end of 2016, we thought that can help communities to grow up faster if we put the funding they need in to our grant project. By the reason, we design a template on meta, ask the communities which need funding write down their annual plan and resource required. There were 6 communities fill the template on that time: Chung Shan Medical University Wiki Club, National Taiwan University Wiki Club, Hsinchu Wikimedia Community, Wiki Medical Project, WikiWomen Community, and Kaohsiung Wikimedia Community. (CSMU asked 0 TWD grant) All their requirement were put into our budget.

Created a tracking platform: we create a cloud-folder on Google Drive, let the organizers reported their result and financial status.

Hold a meetup (can be participated by online or offline) every two weeks, and invited all organizes to participate it to improve their skill of organized. They can explain the progress of their work and the problems they encounter during the meetup, so that the other organizers can discuss it together.

Hold community organized workshop every half years. The first helf one was spoken by Board Members Liang-Chi Shang Kuan (Liang) and Hsin-Hong Hunag (Aaron) , to share their gained knowledge from Wikimedia Conf. in April. The second half one was spoken by Secretary General Tze-Wen Wang (Reke) and Liang. Reke shared how to find a project partner, and Liang talked about the way to make communities diversified.

The second work was stopped on September because of the decreased of attendance. We tried to find the reason by questionnaire and interviewing at the same time. Most of the organizers thought that the situations are so different between one community and another, listening the stories from other community was boring and unhelpful for improving their skill of organizing. The other two works were finished successfully.

Lesson Learned

These is our first time to try to help the development of communities by assigning grants. The level of communities activity has reached our goals. In our surveying, the organizers also said that the grant from WMTW is helpfully for them. However, there still have some problems were found, and we respond to them in the 2018 plan.

Problem 1: The way of grant is inflexibility

We asked communities have an annual project to plan the resources required. However, the organizers of communities are volunteers mostly. It’s common for them to change or cancel the meetup by the effect from their family or job. By the reason, it’s inflexibility for them to plan for a whole year.

Problem 2: The organizers are not easy to repeat the obligations we expect

WMTW hope that the granted communities not only get more participants but also improve their skill of organizing. But when we ask them attend the meetup for organizers, they aren’t interested in it. Otherwise, some organizers probably face the problem like they will graduate nearly or too busy for job, they don’t think that they can investment in organizational work for a long time, so the improvement of ability or more planning are not necessary in their mind.

In response to these 2 questions,we have made two corresponding changes in the grant rules in 2018:

No longer ask the community to propose an annual plan. Grants can be reply for a small and one-time event too. They can submit the application when the community need.

Develop a complete grant policy and contract to ensure that the sponsoring organizer understands our strategy and requirements.

10th Anniversary of WMTW

Overview

2017 is the 10th anniversary of WMTW. We created web-pages online and hold events offline for it. According our SMART goals, we hoped we can make an inventory of what resources do we have, and touch more volunteers who want join Wikimedia movement. The offline events almost matched our goal: 62 people participated the 2 days conference, including a lot of our partner or organizer in last 10 years.

The echoes of the discussion due to the online page were not loud, and we even didn’t finish all contents what we planned. “The story of Wikimedian” just published 4 for 20, and all videos of 10th anniversary conference were uploaded on Youtube but still need to publish.

Planning and Execution

Events for 10th anniversary of WMTW had both part online and offline. We planed to create some pages about this event on meta. These pages can be used for not only publishing all news about the events, but also for storing photos about our history, stories of Wikimedians and so on. The otherwise, there were two offline events planned: One is a two days conference which can get members of WMTW, organizers of communities and partners of Wikimedia movement together, and communicate each other's actions in the movement. The other one is a great editathon that invited all active communities in Taiwan to join. They will set some editing missions about their topics, to invite participants editing articles on Chinese Wikipedia together.

According to improve the reputation of Hsinchu Wikimedia community, the offline conference was planned to be hold in Hsinchu City. We try to ask a wiki-friendly teacher help us recruit some student volunteers, but didn’t get these support at last. Considering it is very difficult to solicit volunteers only by web, we finally reduced the scale of the conference to one track only, so that we can hold all event by our staffs and three volunteers.

We advertise through four channels: 1. Internet bulletin (Facebook, Advanced Site Notices of Chinese Wikipedia). 2. Write to everyone who had signed up our meetups and leave an email after 2015. 3. Seeking aopen culture community assists with the event announcement, 4. Invites partners and community organizers to stay in touch.

Based on the time and men-power considerations, the great editathon was decided to hold with the conference at the same time. We knew that would make the participants of the conference have only a limited time to edit. Therefore, the mission of editing in each community is to set as small as "editing a sentence" or "adding a reference." Even so, most of the participants only looked at these tasks, but did not do it manually.

Online website made immediately when the production are planned. However, when we started to write the “Stories of Wikimedian”, we contacted the former or incumbent Wikipedia administrator living in Taiwan on the first wave, but only one of them said he was willing to be interviewed. and the subsequent visit did not go well. Finally, based on lack of working hours, did not complete the expected number of articles. The process of finding the interviewee is unfavorable, plus busy for other businesses, we didn’t complete the expected number of articles.

Lesson Learned

The biggest lesson we learned from this program is to test the maximum of the manpower what we can mobilize. Since 2011, the highest number of participants in an offline meetup for whole country keep in 30-40. We had ever thought that after the development of communities these years, the number of people who interested in a discussing event also grow up as the number of people who just want to learn how to edit, but the truth seems like we are wrong. Most volunteers care their editing work more, only a few of them are willing to devote themselves to other activities. However, most participants of an event can’t provide any agenda in 2011, but over half sessions of 10th anniversary conference were provided by volunteers, the depth of participation in Wikimedia movement of core volunteers is still growing.

In the short term, we should exercise greater caution in assessing the human resources of large-scale activities. In the long-term strategy, we may need to find some easier and more interesting way to take part in organizational actions to train more volunteers.

Outreach to New Editors

Overview

In 2014, when we first tried to translate "Editing Wikipedia" into Chinese and printed it in a booklet, it was quite convenient to promote the teaching activities. Since then, there have been plans to make more textbooks.

Textbook production process than we expected the difficulties. We printed 500 pieces in the end of December, than it's no time to reach the SMART goals about "use it in events" and "collect survey sample".

Planning and Execution

The project is divided into three parts. We plan to hold a teaching material workshop every month and call on volunteers interested in the production of teaching materials to participate in any part of the work.

The first part, translated "Illustrating Wikipedia" and printed for publication, chaired by our Board member Liang-chi Shangkuan. After the "Editing Wikipedia" brochure was printed in 2014, we found that because of the number of pages are too less to apply for an ISBN, but we can't donate a book without ISBN to most public libraries in Taiwan. For the reason, we revised the plan of these part. We put the other three books "Editing Wikipedia", "Evaluating Wikipedia", "Instructor Basics How to Use Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool" with "Illustrating Wikipedia", published into a new book "Editing Wikipedia: Easy Start Teaching".

The second part is to call on interested volunteers to carry out the development, editing, testing and research of teaching materials.

The third part is to conduct a questionnaire survey on the use of teaching materials.

Teaching materials workshops are basically held every month. We posted advertising through the internet and also invited educators to participate. However, the actual participation of volunteers rarely.

However, with the assistance of another Board member Hsin-hong Huang , the first part of the work is still completed. Some contents of the origin books have been adjusted, including the need to modify the title so that the four books look like four chapters, and removing the original cover/back cover is also needed. These efforts led to a significant loss of progress. We expected to published it in September but actually done in December. In January 2018, 500 copies were printed. For reaching more people, we donated some pieces of them to several public libraries, including the National Central Library , and the municipal library of Taipei City, New Taipei City, Taoyuan City, Taichung City, Tainan City and Kaohsiung City (They are The largest six cities in Taiwan, as known as "The Six City" for Taiwanese). Since all the municipal libraries have branch offices in each district, each of them got 10 or more copies, to ensure that all branches can be assigned to one office. Except for the New Taipei City Library, which has over 100 branch offices. It got 20 copies only.

The second part of the work has a considerable output, there four kinds learning sheet for biography article editing. We tried to use it in the meetup of WikiWomen. An editor with basic knowledge of Wikipedia can complete a short biography in 3 hours. We also design some material for training Teaching Assistant. In the report "Work With University in 2nd Semester of 2016 Academic Year", we find that a material for TA might be helpful when we want push the education program.

The goal for the third part of the program is not reached because of the delay in the first part work.

Lesson Learned

The teaching material development process let us learn at least three things:
1. Editing and publishing skills. We got some problems such as versioning, layout, image processing, etc., but resolved them all successfully.
2. We have completed the ISBN application process and will be even easier in the future when there are another publications to apply.
3. We know about the book donation SOP of Taiwan's public libraries and make it easier to distribute our publications in the future.

At the same time, the question that we have yet to solve is how to make volunteers interested in the process of developing teaching materials and are willing to participate. This part hopes to be carried out in the first half of 2018.